My biggest mistake: Helen Tarrant, founder of Unikorn Commercial Property

When Helen Tarrant migrated to Australia, her family had $70 to its name. As an adult, Tarrant made the decision to start investing in commercial real estate, which saw her quickly build a $10 million dollar portfolio by obtaining 20 properties in just five years.

Tarrant now uses her experience to teach others how to build and manage these types of investments — but as with all experiences, she didn’t get here without making a few mistakes along the way.

In an interview with SmartCompany Plus, Tarrant explains why her biggest mistake centres around the people she had working in her business, Unikorn Commercial Property, as it grew.

The mistake

Tarrant summarises the mistake by saying it all boils down to not having the right team together from the get-go.

It’s simply not something many founders think about when their business is growing fast, she says.

“You just put on people when you first start out, but just because you’re growing as a leader doesn’t mean they’re growing as a person.

When you’re starting out, it can be tempting to hire as quickly as possible in order to keep up with growth, she says.

“But just because you’re growing as a leader doesn’t mean they’re growing as a person.

“It’s been really hard in that sense for me to sort of try to understand them and to try and take care of their growth as well as the company’s growth.”

The context

Unikorn Commercial Property went from $0 to $1 million in sales in its first year, offering training and education courses. It came into the space in 2016 when there were no educators in the commercial property market.

“We became a buyer’s agent — the first buyer’s agent in the commercial property space,” Tarrant explains.

“But people didn’t know what a buyer’s agent even was [at that time]. Our business doubled every year because of word-of-mouth, and we grew in that trajectory.

“And as you’re growing, you’re adding people to your team.”

But there are downsides to growing so fast, Tarrant says, especially if the people you bring on aren’t willing to follow the same trajectory.

“When most people get into a job, they understand their job; it’s sales, or they’re doing inspections, or they’re doing due diligence for us,” Tarrant explains as an example.

“They understand their job, and they can struggle to go outside of their own skills — but that doesn’t bode well for a company that’s growing.”

At Unikorn Commercial Property she expects an ‘all for one and one for all’ mentality — because if the team isn’t growing, the business can’t either.

The impact

Tarrant reiterates that a lot of people “can’t grow, don’t want to grow, or aren’t sure why they need to grow”.

When you’ve got people who have just started out and people who have been there since day dot, it can feel like a constant power struggle as to where each person feels they ‘deserve’ to be sitting in the company, Tarrant explains.

At Unikorn Commercial Property, having these conflicts between the growth of the business and the individual growth of some staff meant the upwards trajectory had halted.

The fix

In the end, something had to give.

“I had to take a step back and couldn’t grow the business as fast as I wanted to,” Tarrant admits.

“We had to restructure our staff and let go of some staff, which is always hard.”

Letting go of team members is never easy, and it was also only the first small step towards finding a fix to the company’s problem.

Now, Unikorn Commercial Property doesn’t look just at academics, professional background or qualifications when hiring. Instead, the focus is largely on “personality, and an eagerness to work”, says Tarrant.

“We look at the want to be a part of something bigger.”

The business is still a “young, growing, changing organisation”, she adds, so it needs people who are dynamic, and are willing to grow and learn alongside these changes.

“And as [the business grows], if they’re not going to be able to achieve [their own growth], or that’s not aligned to the reality, then we just can’t keep them on.”

The lesson

Looking back, Tarrant says she has learnt that when a new employee joins you business, you have to set your expectations right at the beginning.

“You have got to have that hard talk with them,” she says.

“You have to be able to spend the time to invest in them and to train them, but you also have to get them to think bigger right at the beginning.”

So what is Tarrant’s advice to other business owners in the same position, or those afraid they might make the same mistake?

“I think my biggest tip is that you have got to get to know your team members, their passions and their long-term goals,” she says.

“We’re in a new economy; we’re in a new age. People are not working the same as they used to and the work mentality has changed.”

Ultimately, to succeed in this new era and grow with the right team, Tarrant says it’s about building a flexible working environment where you’re actually helping your staff to achieve their big picture goals.

“And then you have to show them the pathway to achieve those goals.”